Designing the Future of Everything, with Phnam Bagley of Nonfiction.Design

Okay, so without further ado, yeah, I'm thrilled to introduce today's guest, Madame Bagley. She's a partner and creative director at Nonfiction. The website is nonfiction.design. It's a San Francisco-based design firm that turns science fiction into reality for building a better future. She's a French industrial designer and architect with 15 years experience creating cutting-edge hardware in wearables, audio, neurotech, and more. And she's worked with a variety of companies from Fortune 500s down to startups, connecting clients and factories via trusted partners and making the transition that's very hard, and hardware is hard, from design to engineering, prototyping, and marketing, and making that process as seamless and efficient as possible. And I'm bigly— thanks so much for joining us. Anything else you want to add there to the introduction at the top before I turn it over to you?

Well, thanks first, Dustin, for having me and for inviting me to speak today. This is the first time I see this kind of event, so this is cool. I will speak a little bit more about nonfiction in my deck. So let's do that. Let's jump into it. Perfect.

All right. Yeah, you can bring up your deck and then when you do, I'm going to turn off my camera and then when you get to the end, I'll turn it back on. But yeah, I just want to emphasize for everybody in the audience is that our guest is here to answer your questions. So don't be shy. We have somebody in the background, the live who's going to help me surfacing your questions. So if you have questions as we go, don't hold back. You can queue them up and then when we get to the Q&A portion, we'll ask away. So yeah, thank you, Pham. I'm going to turn off until you get to the end.

Okay, fantastic. All right. So my name is Phanom Bagley. That's how it's pronounced. And yeah, it's pretty great to be here today speaking about designing the future of everything. So I run a company called Nonfiction and we to turn science fiction into reality for a better future. We practice many types of— wow, why is it going by itself? Sorry, not entirely sure.

There you go.

There you go. And so we practice many different disciplines from strategy to industrial design, which is the design of hardware products for mass manufacturing, branding, space architecture, which is architecture applied to extreme environments like space, on the surface of celestial bodies or in free space. That's actually my background, which is why I'm going to speak a little bit about that as well. We do many kinds of engineering with our partners, and then we also do systems design, like designing school systems or transportation systems. So my company was started about 3 years ago. I have my partner, who's also my husband, doing that. And, and, you know, over the years, You know, we started as a classic industrial design firm and realized that that was too small for us and that we really want to hone on, like, create the future of everything. And throughout these years, we realized that there were certain conditions that we, we wanted our clients to honor in order to even begin working with us. Number one is that we only work on first-to-market. Uh, any client or potential client that comes to us with an idea that someone else has already done, or worse, wants to copy them, we're not interested. The condition number 2 is, you probably all know the 17 Sustainable Development Goals put together by the United Nations. We ask all of our clients to satisfy at least one of these. And throughout the presentation today, you're going to see references to these 17 SDGs on the bottom left corner of the presentation. Number 3 is that there needs to be a path to execution and success. We are not interested in conceptual design that, you know, dies in the ether. I'm very strict about making sure that the ideas that we come up with for our clients are rigorously going through a process of development, engineering, all the way to launch. And the way we do it is by not just practicing design. To me, design was too small. It was too limited. It's really by, by really working closely with scientists, with technologists, with artists, and with business people, and some of these people are part of our team, in order to create meaningful innovation. Because I think each of these groups bring something that really enrich design in the end. So I'm gonna go through some examples of our work. Some of these products, you know, look like they're not real, but actually they are. And some other projects are still in development, but they're definitely on the way to execution. So this first product is the first on-ear headphones with a band called Human Headphones. I'm actually wearing them speaking to you right now. So the idea of Human Headphones was to create an extension of the human body. So when you look at a lot of consumer electronics around, you know, it's a lot of flat surfaces, a lot of screens, a lot of rounded corners, and buttons. And when you look at nature, when you look at the human body, none of these attributes exist. We don't have any straight lines on our body or anywhere in nature for that matter. So we wanted to integrate the idea of natural design into development of this product. So the way it attaches is pretty special. It's so special it took us 700 prototypes to get there. But it's really fitting all of these components, it's extremely organic. Geometry was very complex. Another thing, so as I mentioned, in nature there's no buttons. So on/off, volume up, volume down, all of that is actually controlled by a capacitive touch surface on the outside. And turning on your device is by just magnetically separating the two halves and turning it off is by reconnecting them together. And these are some samples of, you know, the 700 prototypes we went through. So the reason why we had to do so many prototypes is because we wanted, for the most part, a hard shell enclosure that fits more than 90% of all adult ears. And adult ears come in all shapes and sizes and sensitivities. And so we had to test on a lot of people throughout the whole process as we changed the geometry for ergonomics. The next thing is that we work a lot in the medical industry. And, you know, for a long time, the medical industry was very much based on what can be done at the hospital by professionals that were trained to do so. But now, you know, we're in a very exciting time where we bring that kind of care in people's lives and in people's homes. And when we think about disabilities, you know, that comes with age or that comes with accidents of sorts, you know, the number one thing that people want is just to feel normal. And feeling normal means that you don't want, you know, people to see that you have a disability or that you have, yeah, that you need equipment around you to function in life. So we wanted to create here a device that did all of that. So this is the first FDA-approved wearable that helps people with essential tremors. It kind of looks like Parkinson's disease where people tremor through their hands or their heads uncontrollably. And 7 million people in the US alone have this condition. So this is what it looks like. So it's very hard to hold a cup of coffee, to put on jewelry, to write a letter to your kids, and to use your phone, right? Sometimes when the condition is familial, it can hit young people like this woman here. So it's very debilitating, and, you know, these people don't want, you know, their surroundings to stare at them, you know, at the restaurant and at work. So this device uses electricity as medicine, and it disrupts the feedback loop that happens between the that damaged part of the brain and the wrist using 3 electrodes. And so this technology has been pretty life-changing for all the patients it's been prescribed to. And what's pretty wonderful about this is that it's, you know, you don't need to take medication. There's no side effects to all of this. But most importantly, it gives a lot of freedom to the people using it. They don't need any help putting on this watch, right? I don't know if all of you wear a watch, but putting it on actually does require a lot of dexterity and a lot of targeting. So doing it when you have very severe tremors can be complex. So we were able to solve that problem. Charging it could be a problem. Opening a box or packaging could be a problem. But we designed the whole user experience to really make it easy for anyone to use it by themselves. Next, I'm going to talk about something that sounds completely crazy. So, you know, we work in turning humans into superhumans using, again, electricity. So we designed this product, which is, you know, was quite famous when it came out, called Halo Sport by Halo Neuroscience. So we work with neuroscientists and who had developed a technology where you stimulate your motor cortex, and then from there you can get a state of flow much faster. The state of flow, for those who don't know, is— I'm going to give an example. So when you start jogging, you know, it's really hard to put one foot in front of the other because your brain and your body are still thinking, oh my God, I can't, I can't believe I'm here, this is really hard, I'm huffing and puffing, etc., etc. After you've run for a while, you stop thinking those thoughts, and then your brain essentially is hitting a state of flow where, where you don't think about running anymore, you just do. And so this device helps you get to that state much faster, and when you are in that state, you are able to increase your performance and really fine-tune the movements of your body for excellence. And so this kind of technology is used by professional athletes. Here you can see the USA team in cycling using it during their training, and that And that can shave off hundreds of seconds or tens of seconds off of a performance, which can be the difference between a silver and a gold medal. Here you can see it a little bit more. So this works with an app so you can control the 20-minute session you have to go through. Another use of hardware that's really cool is kind of merging it with different types of technology. So here we have a device that we designed for firefighters so they can see through smoke, you know, in real time. And that helps them save lives faster. The way it works is you have this thermal camera on the outside and an AR window on the inside, and that allows you to see through it in real life, in real time. So what you see is the edges of everything that's inside a burning building. So you see the edge of walls, you see the edge of the edges of stairs ceilings and people, and that actually will help you shave off 15 to 20 seconds of the time it takes you to pull out a family off of a burning single-family home. Not only is it going to save the people in the building faster, it's also going to reduce the risk on the lives of the firefighters themselves. Next, I'm going to talk about sleep. So a lot of us suffer from sleep either deprivation, insomnia, tossing and turning, many other things. We go on a bunch of blogs and they always tell us to do the same thing, to block off the lights and buy expensive sheets and mattresses and not drink alcohol before bed, but it doesn't really get you anywhere. And the reason for that is because for a long time we have thought of sleep quality as dependent on environmental on the environment. But really, sleep is a neurological state that needs to be triggered in order to, in order to, to, to, to, to stay in, in high quality. So again, working with neuroscientists, this time at UC Berkeley, we have developed this device that you put on your head before bed, and you can choose to sleep with it or not. What it does is that it stimulates your prefrontal cortex in very specific points, and it helps you fall asleep. It's using a concept called coherence. So when you tell your brain to follow a certain pattern, the pattern of drowsiness, which is the first stage of sleep, your brain then can continue to the second, the third, and the fourth stage of sleep. And then from there, you know, you can stay asleep all night and enjoy a very good, very good quality sleep until the next morning. To give you an idea of how effective this is, Our film producer at the office is a little bit older, and she has been a lifelong insomniac, could not sleep more than 4 to 5 hours a night. And so she became a beta tester for this device. And after the second night of using it, she was able to enjoy 8 hours of sleep uninterrupted, including 1.5 hours of deep sleep and 1.5 hours of REM sleep, which is really called exceptional sleep. And she has been able to maintain it the entire time she's used this product. So I cannot wait for this to truly change people's, you know, outlook on, on life and, and on their sleep. Um, we also work with, you know, many countries in the world. Um, in this case specifically, we're working with Tanzania and Nigeria, specifically the rural areas of this country, these countries. And what we do is that we bring power to everyone, making it very, very affordable and also establishing certain, you know, company rules that will change the outcome of these societies. So this is a company called Jazza, and what they do is that they create these huts that are covered in solar panels and they're 100% of these huts are tended by women. And these women are here to rent out these batteries. And these batteries can be rented, you know, as many times as you want between $1 and $3 a month. And they're being recharged at the hub using these solar panels. And so what's pretty wonderful about this is that one, it gives access to reliable electricity electricity to these people who otherwise might not have access to it affordably. And that gives them access to information, to healthcare, to education, and you name it. But on the other side, the women who are tending to these hubs would otherwise, you know, be taken out of school at age 18 or married off or become mothers at an early age and not really spend the time being independent, making money, or or finding an education. So this is kind of like a win-win situation where we will bring something interesting. So, you know, we're in charge of like designing the product, designing the message as well as the branding. So another thing about the product is that we're here based in San Francisco and, you know, we could export Silicon Valley design all over the world. And I guess most people would be happy about that, but we didn't want to do that. We really wanted to understand what kind of shapes, what kind of patterns, what kind of materials would be relevant in these communities. So as we had all of these limitations in terms of cost of the development of these batteries, we also wanted to integrate local materials. Injection molding in Africa is not going to happen tomorrow. We're working on it. But fabrics, prints, and things like this already exist there. So we integrated this kind material in the design. And not only does it serve as a handle, it also helps cover the ports that you see on the top here, because these regions are typically quite dusty. You know, it was kind of like a super cheap way to, to solve that problem. And I talked to you earlier about the fact I'm a space architect. So a space architect is someone who designs architecture for space, you know, space stations, lunar habitats, and things like that. And I've been been in this career for, for, for quite some time, and my one mission in the, in the world of space is to make it more human. Because for a long time we have sent, you know, superhumans in space, for the most part, people who are highly trained, you know, ex-military, multiple degrees and all that, who are very capable in many ways. But I see the future of space where people like you and I are going to go there, and we need to change quite a few things. Before this happens. And why go to space in the beginning, right? So when you think about the history of humanity, we have moved to all the corners of the planet and beyond. And the next stage is going to space. And we're already seeing it today. And living in space looks like this today, right? I don't know about you, but I'm not going to pay, you know, any amount of dollars to live in an environment that looks like this. I would like it to be a lot more welcoming, really supporting me in living in this extreme environment of microgravity, you know, being bombarded with radiation and living in the strange, you know, environment of where everything floats from the bathroom to your bedroom. And so thinking about what happens on the moon in the future when we go there, this is a project where we put forth the thesis that our imprint, the imprint of humanity, is going to be color. Because on the moon, everything is grayscale, right? And really bringing color to every aspect of our lives, from the architecture to what we wear, to, you know, the things we surround ourselves with, is going to be quite important, especially when, when we think about having subsurface structures. The reason why we think of thinking about using subsurface structures is because the surface of the Moon is extremely dangerous, right? There's the risk of micrometeorites, there's a risk of radiation, um, the temperature difference between day and night or shadow and brightness is extreme, and it will take a toll on a lot of materials. So what we're thinking about doing is using the natural subsurface structures of the Moon called lava tubes that are ancient and really using that to create architecture that can actually support these astronauts of the future. And these are astronauts that are going to be a lot more people than you see on board the ISS right now. They'll be miners, they'll be engineers, they'll be maintenance people working on the Moon for months at a time. So we need a lot more comfort than what you see on board the ISS. And really thinking again about colors and textures, how do you integrate new nature to change the behaviors of all the things you have to do there? How do you work? How do you work out? Right, working out in microgravity, you have to do that 2, 2.5 hours a day, probably a little bit less on the moon. But, you know, you can't do that with tools that look like they were built, you know, cheaply in a garage. You really want to feel good as you're doing it. And thinking about, you know, personal space as well, you know, what is privacy? What kind of shapes, materials, and colors, and even other senses, you know, the sense of And the texture of things is going to be important as well. Also, the technology that you put on your body. What kind of monitoring is necessary for you to live freely? But at the same time, what kind of level of privacy is necessary for you to not go crazy over time? And I believe this is the last section where we also designed the future of food. A lot of people think about hardware industrial design, they think about hardware, enclosure, injection molded products. We also design food because the way we tackle food on this planet as of today is not sustainable. So what we're doing is that, you know, we're designing things like plant-based bacon. This is a Hurray Foods bacon that you can actually buy at Whole Foods that we've developed with this company and really trying to create the balance between the texture and appearance as well as as making sure that it's healthy enough to be eaten, right, would be, would be pretty great. In 2021, this bacon actually saved 1 million pigs from slaughter, so that, that's pretty cool. Another thing about, about food, we have, uh, we won a NASA and Canadian Space Agency competition last year. It was phase 1 of what's called the Deep Space Food Challenge. And what's, what's happening is that we are going to go to Mars very soon, and Mars is 2.5-3 year trip, round trip, where you're going to have to eat. And the technology we have access to today does not allow us to bring nutritious, varied, and interesting food for astronauts to eat. So this challenge was put forth, and yeah, we won phase 1. It's pretty cool. So one of the things that we did for this competition is that we developed developed this, um, microalgae bioreactor that can be grown in microgravity. And there's like multiple systems going on, but microalgae has been shown to protect humans from dangerous levels of radiation and other types of stressors that, that are going on in, in this extreme environment. So the research of microalgae for astronauts has been been around for, you know, some time, but making it appetizing was the problem, right? Like, when you look at the green goo, like, nobody wants to eat it. Um, so what, that— what we did is that we actually created a lot of experiments, a lot of flavor texture, uh, experiments, making sure that when we mix things together, this complexity in, in the food, um, that, that brings a lot of pleasure to these astronauts. Another thing to know about microgravity is that it actually reduces the sensitivities of our taste buds. So we have to take that into account as well. To bring back— to bring the idea of ancestral food, we wanted to bring barbecue to space. And as you can imagine, open fire in space is not— it's kind of frowned upon. So we actually created the system where you can barbecue meat or vegetables using lasers. You know, you can, you can write your name on the piece of meat if you want to. That was pretty fun. And then finally, talking about the future of food, we're working with a chef right now creating this event that's going on in San Francisco in May. I invite all of you to join us. And basically, we're going to talk about the future of eating insects. So insects have been consumed by humans for a very, very long time, but different societies have pushed it on the side, you know, because it looks gross or whatever. But it has been shown to be an extremely good source of protein. And from a sustainability standpoint, it's a lot more efficient than growing meat, you know, because of use of water, energy, and also waste. So, so yeah, making— eating insects appetizing to the eye, to the, to our taste buds, is part of the work we do too. So if you like the types of work that we just talked about, this is like very a small portion of what we do. We actually produce our own video series where you can, where we talk about design and the future of everything. You can find it at futurefuture.design. And really, you know, all these subjects here and more can be accessible to everyone. We'll make sure that we use layman's terms so anybody can have access to it, from children to entrepreneurs to engineers to anybody else, because we believe that design cannot live by itself. We really need to connect with other people to make sure that we push crazy ideas all the way. And that's it for me today.

That was a super, super interesting presentation. Thank you so much, Fernando. And there's a lot of questions. I definitely— it resonated with the audience as well because, yeah, we got a lot of questions already for you. So, yeah, keep putting your questions in the chat. And I just want to get to a few kind of related ones right away. So Prem asked about, you know, what's the process that a client takes to commission your team? Yeah, Brian's asking a similar question. What details does your team require to commission a project? So yeah, can you just tell us a little bit about how clients interface with you at the earliest stages of conceptualizing a project that they work with you on?

Yeah, it comes in a huge range. So we've had clients that came to us with, hey, can you design a school system for this country? That was the brief. That was it. Yeah. And then we have clients that have developed you know, a technology MVP and all that for many years and now want us to turn that technology into something that's manufacturable and commercializable. So yeah, it comes, it comes in different phases. Some clients need just design, some clients need the whole development of the product.

Yeah. And I assume the answer to this one is yes, but it's just a related question. So Adrien asks, do you cooperate collaborate with universities and outside the United States? Have you, have you worked with universities, I guess, like students or that kind of early phase?

So when I say that we work with universities, they're actually our clients and they're actually professors developing their own startup. We don't do collaborations in the sense of working for free. Yeah, we, it's just what we do is so complex and takes a long time, we can't really do that.

Yeah, a question from John here is, which of these projects or designs do you love the most personally, and, and, uh, which products, uh, have you used the most? You said you were wearing the very first, uh, earphone example, but, uh, yeah, which of your projects, uh, do you personally interact with most often?

Um, I mean, um, it's kind of hard to say because so everything I just show you is kind of like old work. And so I'm actually more interested about what we're doing today. But I can tell you one project we're working on right now that's really, really exciting. We're designing a civilization, everything about a civilization, from the city to the way people are, to the health system, to everything else. So that's a really cool project.

Awesome. Daria is asking kind of, I guess, another information about how you interface with the clients. So, you know, what interview or information techniques do you use to better understand your clients' problems? So after you get that initial brief, like, what do those conversations tend to look like with you as you extract more about what they really need?

Yeah, I mean, we have some clients who have a very clear idea of what they need, and so, you know, having a couple meetings in person will get— we will get us there. And throughout the process, we learn from each other, right? Typically, our clients have a lot of experience in the field, but they know nothing about design, so that's where we bridge— we bridge the conversation. Um, some other times, um, you know, I would say we— yeah, it's— so could you repeat the question, please? Sorry.

Oh, just like, yeah, how— let's see, this was from Daria. Yeah, what interview or information techniques do you use to understand your clients?

So understand a client is one thing. It's actually not that important. It's really understanding one, the end user, and understanding what it's going to take to get there. Part of the work that we do is also education for the clients because the client will have preconceived ideas about what the solution should be or like, you know, how much it should cost, and then we bring them the reality behind it. And You know, we try to do it as early as possible. You know, a lot of clients come to us and they with a ridiculously small budget and think they can build the world with it. So we tell them that no, that that's not how it works. And a lot of it has to do with the methodology. So I don't know who teaches this in the world, but I hear this on a weekly basis. A lot of people think that once you have a prototype, type, you can go to manufacturing. There's about a year, a year and a half of work between these two points. And, you know, between mechanical engineer making sure that, you know, there's alignment with electrical engineering and firmware, user experience, material, user testing, you know, all of that takes a lot of time. And so before we even engage with anyone, we're pretty transparent about what needs to happen for a project to even become reality.

Yeah, yeah, that definitely makes a lot of sense. Designing for the end user and kind of talking the clients down from preconceived ideas that they might have coming into it and setting reality straight from— yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. This is sort of a little bit related, I guess, but in your years as a startup mentor, what are some of the most common common mistakes that you've seen hardware founders make, particularly with regards to, like you said, the prototype to manufacturing? I mean, yeah, just from your, I guess, not clients of yours necessarily, but just founders who are building physical products, where do you see them most often go wrong in that early development process?

Yeah, definitely that schedule idea. Also the budget. If you want to design something that's electronic, about this size and, and using new technology, or not even new technology, like kind of common technology, and you have less than $2 million, you should not start.

Yeah.

And I've been, I've been, I've been fought on this point a million times, and everybody is wrong. Everybody is wrong. If you have to have a lot more money than you think.

What do you think about, have you seen, I guess, some success stories, obviously, but like like a consumer-focused crowdfunding platform. So for those who are coming in without their own budget, I mean, do you have— do you recommend that, or have ways that you, uh, yeah, to build that initial capital, I guess, to have $2 million to really bring a product, uh, to market?

Uh, yeah, I mean, before you do crowdfunding like Indiegogo, Kickstarter, and all that, you have to have a functioning prototype. Um, and that's, that's depending on developing, it's not cheap, right? We're about to launch one. I don't know how many million dollars they've dropped in it, but, you know, it was a lot of work and that will make it a lot easier for development afterwards. Like basically everything's ready. It's engineers, it's design. We know what materials, we know how much it's going to cost. We have a manufacturer that's ready to go. The minute we get the money, we push the button and it goes, right? You don't want to to over-promise to your customer and then end up with a product that's like half what you promised and, you know, have it come out 3 years late. By that time, typically hardware products are obsolete and that's going to work against you. So that timeline is another thing that a lot of companies in general, not only startup founders, make the mistake of like It takes a long time to develop a product. Like I would say 18 months to 2 years, depending on what it is, more if it's FDA. And, and trends go by very quickly. So you have to be aware of what to design for whom and when they're going to have access to it and design for that. Because if you design based on trends that are around today, you're going to look out of place in 2 2 to 3 years.

Yeah, any kind of final thoughts before we, before we turn it over to the networking? That was great. Everybody definitely loves the presentation.

Yeah, I mean, uh, send me any, any questions, uh, um, you know, I see the website on the right side here, uh, there's an email on it, um, you know, uh, any, any question you might have, um, I, I also like very, uh, blunt and transparent about the I've done this for many years, you know, and also every, every time you work with someone, you really have to make sure that the quality of work is high. Because just to give you an idea how terrible this business is, a third of our business is fixing other designers' work because they don't know how to make products that that one fits humans or are manufacturable or hits targets or even are relevant. That is not something that is taught very well in most design schools. And so because of that, you know, there's a lot of like crappy products out there. One more advice I like to give is in order to cut costs, a lot of A lot of startup founders want the manufacturer to engineer the product. You can be 100% sure that you will end up with a crappy product. It's— there are certain subtleties about engineering certain details and designing them in a way that really thinks long-term about how this product is going to use. That no factory that I've ever worked with cares about. So yeah, work with professionals. Don't work with people who just graduated 3 months ago.

That sounds like, yeah, definitely good advice for everybody who's watching. Yeah, I want to be cognizant of your time. And yeah, thank you so much again for joining us today and the wonderful presentation. Feel free to stick around in the networking lounge if you like. Otherwise, yeah, thank you so much again, Nam.

Thanks, Dustin. Thanks everyone for coming.

Thanks everyone. Yep, I will see you out in the networking lounge.